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After more than a year of negotiations, Multnomah County and the city of Portland approved a contract in recent weeks that lays out how the two governments will oversee the Joint Office of Homeless Services, which receives upwards of $250 million in tax dollars each year.
The new contract will give the city a greater say in how the county spends its homeless services tax dollars through the Joint Office. City officials have long complained that, despite contributing $30 million to the office annually, they have little input into how it spends the money.
As part of that new contract, a steering committee will oversee the Joint Office, its performance and its spending habits. That committee will consist of elected city and county officials, a business owner, a taxpayer and an east county mayor. According to the freshly inked contract, the Portland mayor—that’s Ted Wheeler until 2025—and one other member of the City Council will serve on the steering committee.
In all, five members of the steering committee will have the authority to vote on decisions. Voting members include the Multnomah County chair, one Multnomah County commissioner, one City Council member, the Portland mayor and an East Portland mayor.
WW has learned that the City Council member Wheeler selected to serve alongside him on the committee is Commissioner Rene Gonzalez.
Gonzalez, the most conservative member of the council, has been openly critical of the Joint Office’s spending since he took office at the beginning of 2023.
Gonzalez made his first big splash at the city when he instructed city bureaus under his watch, including Portland Fire & Rescue and its roving mental health service, Portland Street Response, to halt the distribution of tents and tarps. This June, he successfully implored County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson to suspend county tent purchases until the creation of a concrete policy. Gonzalez has also criticized the county and the Joint Office for how they’ve spent their allocation of supportive housing services tax dollars. (As WW has reported, the Joint Office has repeatedly struggled to spend all of the tax dollars it receives from the tax.)
In a statement today, Gonzalez outlined his priorities.
“I am honored that Mayor Wheeler has asked me to serve on the Steering and Oversight Committee. Look forward to helping to build a more accountable system that balances the needs of the homeless and those raising families, running businesses, and aging in place in the region,” Gonzalez said in an email. “Assuring the system is compassionate without inadvertently enabling self-destructive behavior is of paramount concern.”
Correction: A previous version of this story said Gonzalez implored the county to halt tent distribution. That’s incorrect. Gonzalez successfully implored the county to halt tent purchases, but the county continues to hand out remaining supplies.